The Shadow That Runs Before: The Dreamcatchers, #1

By Jess Ellison Rannie

The scruff of which legends are made…

 

Newly appointed to keep the peace in the small Arizona town of Sorrow’s End, U.S. Marshal Sean Rankin’s sorrows are just beginning. No sooner does he arrive in town with his new-found companion, Joshua – a Shakespeare-quoting Indian in need of a coffee fix – than he must chase after banditos who have kidnapped a young Apache girl.

Forming a posse, however, proves nearly impossible when the locals refuse to ride to the rescue of a hated enemy, no matter how young. Fortunately, the Army proves more cooperative – if not by much.

In league then only with Joshua, a couple of less than impressive Army recruits, and a scout the Apache have named The Shadow That Runs Before, Rankin rides to the rescue.

One rescue, however, leads to another when Rankin learns the banditos are holding other kidnapped children at the ranch serving as their headquarters.

Faced with a far superior force, Rankin must rely on help from a ragtag band of revolutionaries to help even the odds.

The trick then will be in telling the good guys from the bad.

(Western / Action Adventure – 63,000 words)

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jess Ellison Rannie
• Release date: Aug 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781502241177

Book preview

Table of Contents

The Shadow That Runs Before (The Dreamcatchers, #1)

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

The scruff of which legends are made...

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Newly appointed to keep the peace in the small Arizona town of Sorrow’s End, U.S. Marshal Sean Rankin’s sorrows are just beginning.  No sooner does he arrive in town with his new-found companion, Joshua – a Shakespeare-quoting Indian in need of a coffee fix – than he must chase after banditos who have kidnapped a young Apache girl.

Forming a posse, however, proves nearly impossible when the locals refuse to ride to the rescue of a hated enemy, no matter how young.  Fortunately, the Army proves more cooperative – if not by much. 

In league then only with Joshua, a couple of less than impressive Army recruits, and a scout the Apache have named The Shadow That Runs Before, Rankin rides to the rescue.

One rescue, however, leads to another when Rankin learns the banditos are holding other kidnapped children at the ranch serving as their headquarters. 

Faced with a far superior force, Rankin must rely on help from a ragtag band of revolutionaries to help even the odds.

The trick then will be in telling the good guys from the bad.

The Shadow That

Runs Before

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Jess Ellison Rannie

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(The Dreamcatchers - Book One)

This book is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 2003 by Janice Norstrom

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Revised edition copyright ©2008 by Janice Norstrom

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All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author.

Chapter One

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Sean woke to the smell of coffee and the warmth of a campfire at his back, both welcome in the chill of an early desert morning.  Or so they would have been had such comforts not come at the hands of some unknown benefactor.  His camp, after all, had been a solitary one when he’d given himself over to sleep the night before. 

Instinct and long years’ practice then took over.  Tightening his left hand around the gun tucked beneath the blanket with him, Sean snapped his one remaining eye open, whipped his blanket clear, and jerked up.  He then swung his gun up and around in search of danger – and found a stranger sitting beside the fire with one arm extended and firelight glinting off metal held out. 

Sean tightened his finger on the trigger, only to stop just short of pulling it as he realized that what the stranger held out was not a gun but a tin cup filled with coffee.  He froze, his gun centered on the stranger who continued to hold the cup out to him as if it were his usual morning ritual to dispense coffee at the point of a gun.

A moment passed and then two, both gun and cup extended in as bizarre a Mexican standoff as Sean had ever witnessed.  Although tempted to lower his gun at the absurdity, he knew enough about the history of warfare to be wary of Greeks bearing gifts.  Gun therefore held steady, he darted a look around the camp in search of more dangerous opponents.

Don’t worry, the stranger said, a hint of amusement sounding in his tone.  Your scalp is safe.

Sean ignored the comment and continued to check out the camp, twisting his head to cover his blind side.  He found, however, nothing more worrisome than his uninvited guest’s horse: a black the color of mud with an overly large head, a scraggly mane and tail, and a swayed back – quite possibly the ugliest horse Sean had ever seen.

He turned back to the man sitting across the fire from him and noted the decidedly Indian features beneath a wide-brimmed Stetson.  So much for Greeks, he muttered.

Greeks?  The stranger raised an eyebrow.  Then, understanding apparently dawning, he laughed.  "It’s your coffee, so I wouldn’t exactly call it a gift."

Surprised at his uninvited guest’s quick understanding, Sean was nonetheless irked that such an understanding didn’t extend to more practical matters.  You know about Trojan horses, he said on a growl, but you don’t know enough not to sneak into a man’s camp when he’s sleeping?  I could have shot you.

You still can, you know.  Unless, of course, you were to lower that gun of yours.  Again the stranger’s tone sounded of amusement rather than alarm. 

Sean clicked back the hammer of his gun and slipped the weapon into the holster lying across the saddle at the head of his bedroll.  He then snagged the leather eye patch hanging on the saddle horn and slipped it over what had once been his right eye.  That done, he reached out to take the proffered coffee.  If you go around making a regular habit of this sort of thing, he said with a glare to his newly acquired companion, I’m surprised someone hasn’t filled you full of lead before now.

The stranger quirked one corner of his mouth upwards.  Oh, I imagine a few have been tempted.  But my sparkling personality usually wins folks over.

Sean huffed out a noncommittal breath.  He then took a sip of what could most kindly be referred to as a really strong brew.  Lowering the cup with a grimace, he said, Too bad the same can’t be said for your coffee.

The stranger took up a second cup and raised it to his lips, his expression that of a man coming upon water after a long trek in the desert.  He inhaled deeply of the scent before taking a long swallow.  Lowering the cup again, he wrapped both hands around it as if to take comfort in its warmth.  "It’s been said my coffee would put hair on the chest of a newborn baby girl.  So far though it hasn’t done much for me."

Sean set his own cup down beside the fire and sat back to study his companion.  Taking in first the broad features of a face tanned by sand and wind and lined with maybe half a century of years lived, he searched out deception and found only an amused acceptance.  An acceptance not only of that trust held back but of life.  As if he knew something no one else did.  Some joke maybe to which only he knew the punch line. 

Normally Sean distrusted a man who took delight in knowledge held close, figuring what he didn’t know that others did could get him killed.  The man across the fire from him, however, didn’t prickle the hairs on the back of his neck or have that air about him of a man hoarding knowledge for his own gain.  Rather, he reminded Sean of his grandfather on the day he first took him fishing.  Knowing him as he had, his grandfather hadn’t tried to instruct him in the proper way to go about catching a fish.  Instead, he handed him a pole and let him find out for himself what it was he didn’t know and wanted to.

With that lesson firmly in mind, Sean took in next a black Stetson, old and dusted with sand – and pushed up so the face beneath it was clear of shadows.  A coincidence maybe, but Sean thought the man no fool for all that he’d taken up a place beside a stranger’s fire.

Beneath the hat was dark hair shot with grey.  Flowing freely to his shoulders, it was without any adornment that might have branded him as a member of a particular tribe – not that Sean would have been able to make such an identification anyway.  Nor did his clothes give anything away.  The calico shirt, denim pants, and worn boots he wore were standard on the frontier.  He could have been any poor farmer with a rope looped around his waist and no holster tied to his leg.  Hardly the usual look of a wild Indian – or of a man conversant with the history of Ancient Greece.

Whoever he was, this stranger who had taken up residence beside his fire, Sean thought him a man out of place.  Nothing added up to any pattern to which he could give name.  Having long since learned the value of a properly balanced equation and with his grandfather’s lesson in mind, he sought answers easier asked than learned.  You want to tell me what you’re doing here?

The stranger hefted his cup upwards a few inches.  I’m just looking for some coffee.

It was an easy answer.  Too easy.  So Sean tried for something harder.  You wander around bandit territory with no gun on your hip, no rifle in your saddle boot, and riding a horse a starving wolf would turn its nose up at?  There has to be an easier way to get a cup of coffee.

The stranger shrugged.  There are harder ways as well.  Much harder.

Sean realized he’d reached for the wrong memory of his childhood.  This enigmatic stranger was nothing like the grandfather who had gladly dispensed what knowledge he’d had when asked.  Instead, he reminded Sean of the teacher who had made him work for the answer to every question he asked without giving so much as a hint.

He had regularly soaped the man’s windows for an entire year. 

Taking a mental inventory of his saddle bags just in case, Sean tried again.  You got a name?

I have several.  But the one I go by nowadays is ‘Joshua.’  Again a hint of amusement sounded.

Feeling as if his arithmetical skills were being tested, Sean tried adding two plus two.  A White Man’s name and White Man’s clothing.  You on the run maybe?  Hiding out from the Army?

The Army?

The response was less than promising.  Still, Sean persevered.  The way I hear it, the Army has ordered all Apaches west of the Rio Grande to a reservation somewhere.  I figure they probably wouldn’t take too kindly to anyone disobeying that order.

Ah.  Joshua nodded in understanding.  Crook’s General Order No. 10.  Any Indian refusing to enter a reservation is to be considered hostile and punished accordingly.  He raised the cup to his lips again and eyed Sean over it.  No, he said, his tone the casual one of a man unused to looking over his shoulder for trouble come sneaking up behind.  I’m not too worried about that.  He then took a sip from his coffee, as would a man at ease with his company and the world at large, no matter that the world – not to mention his company – was none too at ease with him.

Sean raised his right eyebrow and felt a familiar tug as the jagged scar running up it from his ruined eye pulled it slightly to the right.  You’re not worried about someone taking that as license to shoot you?  Or maybe just haul you in to the nearest Army post?

"Someone like you maybe?" 

Sean figured the words were another test, as Joshua watched him as if he already knew the answer and was simply curious to see if he would give the right one.

Feeling like the boy he’d once been who had spent far too many of his after-school hours cleaning the blackboard, Sean evaded giving either a correct response or a wrong one, saying only, Maybe. 

One corner of Joshua’s lips quirked upwards, and Sean wasn’t sure if that signified a passing grade or not.  Joshua went on then to give his verdict.  Well, I reckon if you were going to shoot me, you’d have done it by now.  And seeing as it’s a fair piece to the nearest Army post, you’d probably have to go out of your way to turn me in.  It would be easier to shoot me.

He’d failed him then.  His amusement though at that failure wasn’t that of a smarter man’s delight in his own superiority but of a fond adult amused by the machinations of a five year old out to get his way and too young to know quite how to go about fooling people.

Sean wished for a handy window in need of soaping. 

That wish not immediately granted, he tried again for answers Joshua seemed not inclined to give.  You seemed pretty sure I wouldn’t shoot you, coming in to my camp the way you did and not so much as batting an eye when I all but put a hole in you.  Now, why is that?

Let’s just say I’ve spent the last twenty years observing folks, seeing what makes them tick.  And you seemed harmless enough.

Joshua’s tone was amiable, yet Sean felt as if his manhood had been insulted.  Rising to his own defense and sounding as indignant as he felt, he said, Any man’s harmless enough when he’s sleeping.

True.  But you can tell a lot about a man just by the way he sleeps and how he sets up his camp.  Even by the camp he picks for himself.

And my choices all tell you I’m harmless?

That question Joshua didn’t hesitate to answer.  Your choices tell me you aren’t trying to hide from anyone.  That you’re experienced enough to know how to set a camp up right.  That you’re sure enough of yourself to cross the desert on your own.  And that you’re smart enough to sleep with a gun under your blanket.

Sean raised an eyebrow.  You knew I had a gun handy?

The holster hanging on your saddle was empty.

And you came sneaking into my camp anyway?  A definite blow to Sean’s manhood.  I looked that harmless to you?

Joshua seemed to realize the insult he’d offered and tempered it.  A rattlesnake is harmless if you don’t stir him up.

A more interesting discussion to be had, Sean decided to consider his pride soothed.  So, you’re not hiding out from the Army.  You hiding from anything else?

Oh, I reckon we’re all hiding from something.

Like the law maybe?

Maybe.  Still that amusement sounded.  But Sean thought he was amused more by the question than by whatever answer he might have been holding back.

Sean wondered then what he hid from, this man across the fire who had taken on a conquering people’s name.  Not the law.  Of that he was sure.  At least, not any right and true one he need hang his head at having flaunted.  No, that uncertain answer wasn’t an evasion but a further testing, no easy answers given a man might not trust.  Whatever answer was to be had, Sean was sure it would be hard won and one by which he could set store.

He tried coming at it from another angle.  Then again, I’d say it’s not the Law that’s got you worried.  Not unless you use that swill of yours to subdue your intended victims and then hike off with that bag of bones I laughingly refer to as a horse strapped to your back.

A man doesn’t need a gun to commit a crime.

It was a serious point made, an answer of sorts given to a question not asked.  Sean, however, wasn’t sure of the answer nor of its question.  Instead, he gave an answer of his own.  A man might not need a gun to do wrong, but in my experience most will use one.  It gives them courage enough to do what they know they shouldn’t.

Joshua cocked his head, his own arithmetical skills apparently to be given a workout.  You have a lot of experience with criminals, do you?

It was an old trick, that turning of the tables, the one interrogated become the interrogator and his opponent turned from offensive tactics to defensive, power shifted and a game won.  Sean was sure, however, that no such game was being played.  He thought Joshua asked no question he didn’t want answered, either for his own sake or for that of the one questioned, a quest for knowledge taken up or a challenge given.

Challenge accepted, Sean said, I have experience enough.  Maybe more than enough.

Joshua cocked his head still further, an answer found that hadn’t been explicitly given.  You’re a lawman?

Sean felt another prick to his pride that Joshua had chosen that one answer among all the possibilities.  He offered then one of those possibilities so readily dismissed, his tone again indignant as he said, What?  You don’t think I’m a dangerous enough sort to be an outlaw?

An outlaw wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot me or been angry that he nearly had. 

It was a quick answer with the ring of truth, and again Sean allowed his pride to be soothed.

That settled, Joshua went back to his sums.  So, you’re a lawman?  Or a bounty hunter maybe.

Sean thought of making him work harder at the equation, but he didn’t see the sense in making him work for what he’d already found.  I’m a marshal.  Marshal Sean Rankin.

Joshua inclined his head in acknowledgment of both Sean’s willingness to hand out his name and of a sum well totaled.  That’s a hard way to earn a living.  That how you lost your eye?

No.  Sean’s tone was flat, warning given of a forbidden territory entered, Sean too used to avoiding his reflection in mirrors to care to see it in another man’s eyes.  In an unconscious gesture become habit after ten years of wanting to forget, he raised his right hand to cover the scar jagging down his cheek, skin once torn become puckered and unlovely to look at.

Joshua ignored the hint.  The war then?

Sean felt something within grow hard and close about a darkness long buried and ignored.  Turning away from it, he made his warning more plain.  His tone become a growl, he said, You always ask such personal questions of a man you’ve just mooched coffee off of?

That time Joshua took the hint.  Sorry.  I guess I’ve been living among White Men too long.

Sean went back to his equation, as much to divert interest as to find answers.  Why is that?

You know of a better way to get to know a people?

Sean struggled to make the numbers add up.  During the war, there were those who lived among the enemy so as to gather information.  We called them spies.

"And their own people, what did they call them?"

The